“Jobs of the future are already here”

The ques­tion of the jobs of the future is often seen from a neg­at­ive angle, that of the destruc­tion of jobs by auto­ma­tion. This per­spect­ive is mis­taken and ignores two fun­da­ment­al devel­op­ments. The first is that although the work­force is dis­ap­pear­ing, and job descrip­tions are becom­ing obsol­ete, jobs are not dis­ap­pear­ing. They are car­ried out dif­fer­ently, and human skills still play a role. The second is that the jobs of the future, those that are linked to emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies such as data, draw on those of today.

It is true that some of the exist­ing lit­er­at­ure, such as McKin­sey reports, emphas­ise the massive, immin­ent and inev­it­able nature of a trans­form­a­tion that will mean the dis­ap­pear­ance of entire pro­fes­sions. Per­spect­ives like this gen­er­ate shock and do not help us to think about trans­ition. 72% of European work­ers think that robots will steal their jobs! Admit­tedly, things are hap­pen­ing very quickly. But we can think about them and decon­struct our vis­ions of the dis­ap­pear­ance of work to recon­struct a real­ity that will be made up of trans­form­a­tions and transitions.

One nov­elty is that the auto­ma­tion of tasks now con­cerns ser­vice activ­it­ies on a massive scale. Yet, if we con­sider industry, it is already an old story – as old, in fact, as the indus­tri­al revolu­tion. Should­n’t we learn from this? If we dis­reg­ard France and the UK, which have under­gone major dein­dus­tri­al­isa­tion, and con­sider our European neigh­bours, we do not see any spec­tac­u­lar attri­tion in the num­ber of indus­tri­al work­ers. The jobs are there. And the jobs, in the sense of indus­tri­al jobs, are there too. Need we remind ourselves that the most heav­ily auto­mated coun­tries in the world (Ger­many and Japan) are also those with the low­est unem­ploy­ment rates?

This means that humans are in these indus­tri­al jobs, even if their indi­vidu­al jobs have dis­ap­peared from the nomen­clature. It is neces­sary to identi­fy the con­tinu­ity that lies beneath the dis­con­tinu­ity: tasks are con­tinu­ally chan­ging, and oper­at­ors are fol­low­ing this move­ment. In the auto­mobile industry, there are now few humans on an assembly line, but they are found else­where, and often very close to the line: in sur­veil­lance and qual­ity con­trol tasks, some­times upstream, some­times downstream.

This con­tinu­ity can even be under­stood by leav­ing aside the notion of an indus­tri­al trade, such as car man­u­fac­turer, and think­ing in terms of a trade in its own right, such as turn­er-miller. The trade that the turn­er-millers prac­tised is still there. Whist the oper­at­or is a machine, the skilled work­er works with it, or super­vises it, or super­vises a num­ber of machines, or a seg­ment of the line. It is the pos­i­tion of the human being in this “job” that has changed. But the ele­ments of the job, the intim­ate know­ledge of the pro­cesses, tools, mater­i­als, work­ing envir­on­ment, the abil­ity to under­stand a prob­lem and to provide a rap­id solu­tion remain at the heart of their activity.

This evol­u­tion that we have seen in industry is now tak­ing place, in fairly sim­il­ar terms, in ser­vices. And we find the same per­man­ence of ‘trades’ in activ­it­ies that have been shaken up by auto­ma­tion and the arrival of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Let’s take three examples.

We know that the paralegal pro­fes­sions and a good part of the account­ing pro­fes­sions – for example, everything to do with expense reports – are already affected by this move­ment. But the human aspect has not dis­ap­peared, it has simply evolved towards an audit­ing role. In terms of employ­ment, of course, this may have con­sequences: the per­form­ance of machines is such that the human work­force will prob­ably shrink. The job descrip­tion will also evolve, while remain­ing closely linked to the job into which the machine has been inser­ted. But the skill set required in the new job descrip­tion remains close, both in terms of tech­nic­al skills (identi­fy­ing dis­crep­an­cies, under­stand­ing VAT rates) and gen­er­ic skills (accur­acy, atten­tion to detail).

A second example: new jobs are emer­ging around auto­mated activ­it­ies, such as data ana­lyst or AI edu­cat­or. The job titles may some­times seem pom­pous, but the level of qual­i­fic­a­tion is fairly aver­age: around two years of high­er edu­ca­tion. These are there­fore tech­nic­ally jobs that are access­ible to former oper­at­ors, to trades­people. We are now begin­ning to under­stand that data ana­lys­is and AI edu­ca­tion are done bet­ter when those who under­take them come from with­in the trade in ques­tion. There is indeed a trans­vers­al or gen­er­ic part in these emer­ging jobs. But there is still ver­tic­al career pro­gres­sion. Pro­fes­sion­al exper­i­ence and mas­tery of busi­ness ele­ments remain an added value.

The third example is call centres. IBM has cal­cu­lated that 45% of the requests handled in its call centres could be pro­cessed by a bot. But this still leaves room for humans: around a core activ­ity which, in the case of IBM, car­ried out by soft­ware. Around which the com­plex and sens­it­ive world of rela­tion­ships with users can devel­op and offer humans spaces in which to deploy their skills. And that being far from lines of script and mind-numb­ing work which still make some call centres into ser­vice factories.

In 2019, I pub­lished a book with Clara-Doïna Schmelk entitled Les Méti­ers du futur, pub­lished by First. I com­pleted this pro­spect­ive approach with a second book, entitled Emploi 4.0, pub­lished in 2021 by Edi­tions Atlande. We based our work on a long-term fore­cast. Barely three years later, some of the changes we ima­gined in the medi­um term have already occurred. But these are not so much rup­tures, social break­downs and human tra­gedies, as they are trans­itions. The jobs of the future have appeared, and for the most part they are not rad­ic­al innov­a­tions. What has happened is that pro­fes­sion­als, with spe­cif­ic skill sets, have seen their jobs trans­formed, and have fol­lowed this trans­form­a­tion. Oth­ers, rely­ing on their trans­vers­al skills but also on a “trade” qual­i­fic­a­tion, have inves­ted in the new activ­it­ies offered to people in trades that have not dis­ap­peared, but where the machine now holds a cent­ral place. Any­one can change jobs, provided they are giv­en the right support!

It is true that some gen­er­ic jobs, such as those of middle man­age­ment, are deeply dis­or­i­ented – espe­cially with the growth of remote work.

It is true that some gen­er­ic jobs, such as those of middle man­age­ment, are deeply dis­or­i­ented – espe­cially with the growth of remote work. How­ever, the role of a man­ager, between organ­isa­tion and super­vi­sion, is at the centre of the activ­it­ies that are emer­ging and being offered to people around their former pro­fes­sion. Super­vising robots and soft­ware, con­trolling their work, extend­ing it, guid­ing it, tak­ing the best part of it: this is already the core of the jobs of the future, and these jobs are already ours.

The jobs of the future are already here. For the most part, if we look at the core pro­fes­sions – caring for people, mak­ing bread, defend­ing a defend­ant, erect­ing a build­ing – these pro­fes­sions are here to stay. But we must dis­tin­guish between the job and the role that we, as human beings, play in it. And this role is bound to change, some­times pro­foundly, some­times at the mar­gin. If you take care pro­fes­sions, for example, we could cer­tainly ima­gine a redis­tri­bu­tion of tasks to the robots: phys­ic­al tasks such as lift­ing patients, psy­cho­lo­gic­al care, accom­pa­ny­ing, listen­ing and caring for humans. But it is likely that these care robots will not be deployed for some time in France, in the way they are already used in Japan. On the oth­er hand, a part of the mon­it­or­ing is already auto­mated, which does not make the nurs­ing pro­fes­sion dis­ap­pear, nor the jobs of nurses, but con­trib­utes to trans­form­ing this activ­ity. The evol­u­tion is more spec­tac­u­lar in oth­er sec­tors: a good part of the account­ing and paralegal pro­fes­sions are obvi­ously being absorbed by auto­ma­tion, and in these pro­fes­sions people’s time is being spent on con­trol and coordin­a­tion. In terms of employ­ment volume, each indus­tri­al revolu­tion has always cre­ated more jobs than it has des­troyed. Moreover, Euro­stat estim­ates that AI and digit­al tech­no­logy will cre­ate 15 mil­lion jobs in Europe, while the num­ber of jobs which will be lost is 6 mil­lion. The bal­ance is there­fore largely positive!